Twitter To Expand Tweets to 280 Characters

But it's not available for everyone yet.

Twitter is gearing up to make a huge change — and no, it's not an edit button.

Earlier today, the social media platform announced that it would be launching a test to increase the character limit to 280, as opposed to the 140 characters that tweets are currently limited to now. In a blog post written by Product Manager Aliza Rosen and Senior Software Engineer Ikuhiro Ihara, the company explained the rationale behind the decision, saying that they want to give users a way to communicate their thoughts without having to cram them into such a small space. "I quickly run into the 140 character limit and have to edit my Tweet down so it fits," Rosen explained, adding that users who tweet in different languages might not experience the same issue. "Sometimes, I have to remove a word that conveys an important meaning or emotion, or I don’t send my Tweet at all," she wrote.

This test will only be available to a small group of users to start, but, as expected, the internet had mixed feelings about this announcement. Some people expressed positive thoughts, but most seemed pretty unimpressed with the feature. Some users proclaimed that they'd rather have a way to edit their tweets, while others urged the social media company to tackle online harassment first. And there were plenty of users who seemed concerned what Donald Trump might do with a 280-character limit — a legitimate worry, considering the president's tweets about North Korea have been interpreted by the country's leaders as a declaration of war.

Nevertheless, it seems as though Twitter was prepared for some of those negative reactions. In their blog post, Rosen and Ihara wrote: "We understand since many of you have been Tweeting for years, there may be an emotional attachment to 140 characters – we felt it, too." It remains to be seen whether or not this feature will be available to all users eventually; until then, we might just need to imagine what a 280-character Twitter is actually like.